The fossilized skull of a gigantic sea monster that attacked and ate whales was unearthed in an ancient seabed along the arid wilderness of the Peruvian coast.
The remains of the incredible creature are so huge, researchers have dubbed it “the Leviathan.”
The Leviathan, a terrifying behemoth of the deep, is described in the Bible’s Old Testament. The Hebrews called it one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper. Those that observed it in the waters far offshore claimed the horrible thing was the most terrifying creature in existence.
Long thought to be a myth, the Leviathan has been found. The fossil is well-preserved and is a testament in living stone to the terrors of the seas.
The 12 million-year-old creature, more than 55-feet long, has huge teeth and is believed to have once hunted and fed on other large aquatic animals like seals, dolphins and other whales.
“It was a kind of a sea monster,” Dr. Christian de Muizon, director of the Natural History Museum in Paris told BBC News.
Writing about the discovery in the journal Nature, the research team relate how they discovered the Leviathan skull in the Pisco-Ica desert of Peru.
Olivier Lambert, a student of de Muizon, described the discovery: “It was the last day of our field trip when one of our colleagues came and told us that he thought he’d found something very interesting. So we joined him and he showed it to us.”
Although the specimen interested the student, he at first thought it was the remains of a sperm whale and wasn’t aware of the magnitude of the discovery.
“We immediately saw that it was a very large whale and when we looked closer we saw it was a giant sperm whale with huge teeth.” Or so he thought, but it wasn’t a sperm whale at all.
What he thought was a sperm whale actually was a creature much larger, much more vicious, and much older. The Leviathan also has teeth on the upper and lower jaw whereas the sperm whale only has a set of lower teeth.
Researchers through the years have speculated that a creature like Leviathan might exist based on teeth that have been found. Now with the discovery of the massive skull, no doubt remains that such a prehistoric sea creature did live to terrorize the oceans.
The ancient myth has become reality.
No one knows why the creature died out. More research may uncover the cause.
The entire research team are whale experts and fans of the novel “Moby Dick.” In honor of the author, Herman Melville, they officially named one of the greatest sea monster whales after him.
From now on, in scientific literature the fearsome beast will be known as the “Leviathan melvillei.”
